Summary
Surge shows inconsistent status indicators for technically identical and successful NTP operations. The same successful time synchronization is marked as "success" for short-lived processes but "error" for daemon processes.
Problem Description
Two processes performing identical NTP operations to time.apple.com:123 receive different status markings:
- sntp (command-line tool): ✅ Success - "Process terminated"
- timed (system daemon): ❌ Error - "ERR_IDLE_CLOSE"
Both operations successfully complete NTP time synchronization with identical network behavior.
Evidence
sntp Process (Marked as Success ✅)
Rule Evaluating - 0.5 ms
Active - 726.6 ms
Events
08:14:41.523456 [Rule] Rule evaluating requires DNS lookup for rule: GEOIP CN
08:14:41.523602 [DNS] Use cached DNS result for time.apple.com. A record count: 3, AAAA record count: 0
08:14:41.523692 [Rule] DNS completed, IPv4 address for matching: 17.253.84.251, IPv6 address for matching: N/A
08:14:41.523785 [Rule] Rule matched: FINAL
08:14:42.250987 [UDP] Process terminated
timed Process (Marked as Error ❌)
Rule Evaluating - 2.0 ms
Active - 1089.9 s
Events
06:21:49.211916 [Rule] Rule evaluating requires DNS lookup for rule: GEOIP CN
06:21:49.212078 [DNS] Use cached DNS result for time.apple.com. A record count: 3, AAAA record count: 0
06:21:49.212141 [Rule] DNS completed, IPv4 address for matching: 17.253.84.251, IPv6 address for matching: N/A
06:21:49.212225 [Rule] Rule matched: FINAL
06:39:59.078793 [UDP] Closed with error: ERR_IDLE_CLOSE (SGNGTCP2ErrorDomain:-238)
Verification
Both operations successfully completed time synchronization (verified in macOS system logs):
log show --predicate 'process == "timed"' --last 10m | grep "Received time"
# Shows: "Received time Tue Sep 9 08:14:24 2025±0.23 from NTP"
Impact
- User Confusion: Users believe system daemons are failing when they're actually succeeding
- False Diagnostics: Users waste time investigating normal system behavior
- Inconsistent UX: Identical successful operations display different status indicators
Expected Behavior
Both successful NTP operations should be marked consistently. The ERR_IDLE_CLOSE after successful data transfer appears to be normal resource cleanup, not an actual error.
Environment
- Surge Version: 5.10.5 (3350)
- macOS Version: macOS Sequoia15.6.1
- Scenario: System automatic time sync vs manual sntp command
Reproduction
- Monitor Surge dashboard during automatic system time sync (timed)
- Run manual
sntp time.apple.com command
- Compare status indicators for identical NTP operations
- Notice successful operations marked differently based on process type
